Tag: Politics

  • How Charlie Kirk Changed Gen Z’s Politics – The 74

    How Charlie Kirk Changed Gen Z’s Politics – The 74


    Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

    This analysis originally appeared at The Up and Up, a newsletter focused on youth culture and politics. 

    There’s been a massive effort to understand why Gen Z shifted right in the 2024 election. Part of that movement was thanks to Charlie Kirk and his work to engage young people — on and offline.

    Whether it was his college tours or the campus debate videos he brought to the forefront of social media, he changed the way young people think about, consume and engage in political discourse.

    Over the past few years, as I’ve conducted Gen Z listening sessions across the country, I’ve watched as freedom of speech has become a priority issue for young people, particularly on the right. The emphasis on that issue alone helped President Donald Trump make inroads with young voters in 2024, with Kirk as its biggest cheerleader. Just a few years ago, being a conservative was not welcomed on many liberal college campuses. That has changed.

    Even on campuses he never visited, Kirk, via his massive social media profile and the resonance of his videos online, was at the center of bringing MAGA to the mainstream. Scroll TikTok or Instagram with a right-leaning college student for five minutes, and you’re likely to see one of those debate-style videos pop into their feed. Since the news broke of the attack on his life last week, I’ve heard from many young leaders — both liberal and conservative — who are distraught and shook up. The reality is that Kirk changed the game for Gen Z political involvement. Even for those who disagreed with his politics, his focus on young voters inevitably shifted how young people were considered and included in the conversation.

    Like many of you, I’ve followed Kirk for years. Whether you aligned with his policy viewpoints or not, his influence on the conversation is undeniable. And, for young people, he was the face of the next generation for leadership in the conservative party.

    Kirk’s assassination was the latest in a string of political violence, including the political assassination in Minnesota that took the life of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and left state Sen. John Hoffman wounded. One of the most common fears I hear from young people across the country and the political spectrum is that political division has gone too far. Last week’s shooting also coincided with a tragic school shooting in Colorado. The grave irony of all these forces coinciding — gun violence, political violence and campus violence — cannot be ignored.

    In all my conversations with young people, one thing is clear: they are scared.

    Gen Z perspectives 

    After Wednesday’s tragedy, I reached out to students and young people I’ve met through listening sessions with The Up and Up, as well as leaders of youth organizations that veer right of center. Others reached out via social media to comment. Here’s some of what they shared.

    California college student Lucy Cox: “He was the leader of the Republican Party and the conservative movement right now especially for young people. He’s probably more famous than Trump for college students. He had divisive politics, but he never went about it in a divisive way. He’s been a part of my college experience for as long as I’ve been here. He felt like somebody I knew. His personality was so pervasive. It feels very odd that I’m never going to watch a new Charlie Kirk video again.”

    Jesse Wilson, a 30-year-old in Missouri: “From the first time I saw him, it was on the ‘Whatever’ podcast, I’ve watched that for a long long long time. Just immediately, the way he carried himself and respected the people he was talking to regardless of who they were, their walk of life, how they treated him. Immediately I just thought, ‘Man, there’s just something different about him.’ He was willing to engage. It was the care, he didn’t want to just shut somebody down. He was like, ‘These are my points, and this is what I’m about,’ and it seemed like there was a willingness to engage and meet people where they’re at. I found it really heartwarming. And we need it. That’s what’s going to make a difference.”

    Ebo Entsuah, a 31-year-old from Florida: “Charlie had a reach most political influencers couldn’t even imagine. I didn’t agree with him on a number of things, but there’s no mistaking that he held the ear of an entire generation. When someone like that is taken from the world, the impact multiplies.”

    Danielle Butcher Franz, CEO of The American Conservation Coalition: “Charlie changed my life. The first time I ever went to D.C. was because of him. He invited me to join TPUSA at CPAC so I bought a flight and skipped class. When we finally met in person he grinned and said, ‘Are you Republican Sass?’ (My Twitter at the time) and gave me a big thumbs-up. I owe so much of my career to him. Most of my closest friends came into my life through him or at his events. Because of Charlie, I met my husband. We worked with him back when TPUSA was still run out of a garage. Charlie’s early support helped ACC grow when no one else took us seriously. He welcomed me with open arms to speak at one of his conferences to 300+ young people when ACC was barely weeks old. I keep looking around me and thinking about how none of it would be here if I hadn’t met Charlie.”

    A 26-year-old woman who asked to remain anonymous: “I would be naive to not admit that my career trajectory and path would not have been possible without Charlie Kirk. He forged a path in making a career with steadfast opinions, engaging with a generation that had never been so open-minded and free, slanting their politics the exact opposite of his own. He made politics accessible. He made conservatism accessible. But damn, he made CIVICS accessible. He dared us to engage. To take the bait. To react. He was controversial because he was good at what he was doing. Good at articulating his beliefs with such conviction to dare the other side to express. He died engaging with the other side. In good or bad faith is one’s own to decide, but he was engaging. In a time where the polarization is never more clear. So I will continue to dare to engage with those I agree and those I disagree with. But it’s heartbreaking. It feels like we’ve lost any common belonging. There has not been an event in modern political history that has impacted me this much. Maybe it hits too close to home.”

    Disillusioned by a divided America 

    Over the summer, I wrote about Gen Z’s sinking American pride. Of all generations, according to Gallup data, Gen Z’s American pride is the lowest, at just 41%. At the time, I wrote that this is not just about the constant chaos which has become so normalized for our generation. It’s more than that. It’s a complete disillusionment with U.S. politics for a generation that has grown up amid hyperpolarization and a scathing political climate. What happened last week adds a whole layer.

    Beyond the shooting, there is the way in which this unfolded online. There’s a legitimate conversation to be had about people’s reactions to Kirk’s death and an unwillingness to condemn violence.

    As a 19-year-old college student told me: “This reveals a big problem that I see with a lot of members in Gen Z — that they tend to see things in black and white and fail to realize that several things can be true at once.”

    There’s also the need for a discussion about the speed at which the incredibly graphic video of violence circulated — and the fact that it is now seared into the minds of the many, many young people who watched it.

    We live in a country where gun violence is pervasive. When we zoom out and look toward the future, there are inevitable consequences of this carnage.

    Since The Up and Up started holding listening sessions in fall 2022, young people have shared that civil discourse and political violence are two of their primary concerns. One of the most telling trends are the responses to two of our most frequently asked questions: “What is your biggest fear for the country, and what is your biggest hope for the country?” 

    Consistently, the fear has something to do with violence and division, while the hope is unity.

    I think we all could learn from the shared statement issued by the Young Democrats and Young Republicans of Connecticut before Trump announced Kirk’s death, in which they came together to “reject all forms of political violence” in a way we rarely, if ever, see elected officials do.


    Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

    Source link

  • Students, schools race to save clean energy projects in face of Trump deadline

    Students, schools race to save clean energy projects in face of Trump deadline

    Tanish Doshi was in high school when he pushed the Tucson Unified School District to take on an ambitious plan to reduce its climate footprint. In Oct. 2024, the availability of federal tax credits encouraged the district to adopt the $900 million plan, which involves goals of achieving net-zero emissions and zero waste by 2040, along with adding a climate curriculum to schools.

    Now, access to those funds is disappearing, leaving Tucson and other school systems across the country scrambling to find ways to cover the costs of clean energy projects.

    The Arizona school district, which did not want to impose an economic burden on its low-income population by increasing bonds or taxes, had expected to rely in part on federal dollars provided by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, Doshi said. 

    But under HR1, or the “one big, beautiful bill,” passed on July 4, Tucson schools will not be able to receive all of the expected federal funding in time for their upcoming clean energy projects. The law discontinues many clean energy tax credits, including those used by schools for solar power and electric vehicles, created under the IRA. When schools and other tax-exempt organizations receive these credits, they come in the form of a direct cash reimbursement.

    At the same time, Tucson and thousands of districts across the country that were planning to develop solar and wind power projects are now forced to decide between accelerating them to try to meet HR1’s fast-approaching “commence construction” deadline of June 2026, finding other sources of funding or hitting pause on their plans. Tina Cook, energy project manager for Tucson schools, said the district might have to scale back some of its projects unless it could find local sources of funding. 

    “Phasing out the tax credits for wind and solar energy is going to make a huge, huge difference,” said Doshi, 18, now a first-year college student. “It ends a lot of investments in poor and minority communities. You really get rid of any notion of environmental justice that the IRA had advanced.”

    Emma Weber leads a chant at a Colorado state capitol rally in support of “The Green New Deal for Colorado Schools.” Credit: Courtesy of Emma Weber

    The tax credits in the IRA, the largest legislative investment in climate projects in U.S. history, had marked a major opportunity for schools and colleges to reduce their impact on the environment. Educational institutions are significant contributors to climate change: K-12 school infrastructure, for example, releases at least 41 million metric tons of emissions per year, according to a paper from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. The K-12 school system’s buses — some 480,000 — and meals also produce significant emissions and waste. Clean energy projects supported by the IRA were helping schools not only to limit their climate toll but also to save money on energy costs over the long term and improve student health, advocates said.

    As a result, many students, consultants and sustainability leaders said, they have no plans to abandon clean energy projects. They said they want to keep working to cut emissions, even though that may be more difficult now.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    Sara Ross, cofounder of UndauntedK12, which helps school districts green their operations, divided HR1’s fallout on schools into three categories: the good, the bad and the ugly. 

    On the bright side, she said, schools can still get up to 50 percent off for installing ground source heat pumps — those credits will continue — to more efficiently heat and cool schools. The network of pipes in a ground source pump cycles heat from the shallow earth into buildings.

    In the “bad” category, any electric vehicle acquired after Sept. 30 of this year will not be eligible for tax credits — drastically accelerating the IRA’s phase-out timeline by seven years. That applies to electric school buses as well as other district-owned vehicles. Electric vehicle charging stations must be installed by June 30, 2026 at an eligible location to claim a tax credit.*

    EPA’s Clean School Bus Program still exists for two more years and covers two-thirds of the funding for all electric school buses districts acquire in that time. The remaining one-third, however, was to be covered by federal and state tax credits. 

    The expiration of the federal tax credits could cost a district up to $40,000 more per vehicle, estimated Sue Gander, director of the Electric School Bus Initiative run by the nonprofit World Resources Institute. 

    Related: So much for saving the planet. Climate jobs, and many others, evaporate for 2025 grads

    Solar projects will see the most “ugly” effects of HR1, Ross said. 

    Los Angeles Unified School District is planning to build 21 solar projects on roofs, carports and other structures, plus 13 electric vehicle charging sites, as part of an effort to reduce energy costs and achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2040. The district anticipated receiving around $25 million in federal tax credits to help pay for the $90 million contract, said Christos Chrysiliou, chief eco-sustainability officer for the district. With the tight deadlines imposed by HR1, the district can no longer count on receiving that money. 

    “It’s disappointing,” Chrysiliou said. “It’s nice to be able to have that funding in place to meet the goals and objectives that we have.”

    Emma Weber, at left, trains student leaders at Sunrise Movement’s “summer intensive” in Illinois this year. Credit: Courtesy of Emma Weber

    LAUSD is looking at a small portion of a $9 billion bond measure passed last year, as well as utility rebates, third-party financing and grants from the California Energy Commission, to help make up for some of the gaps in funding.

    Many California State University campuses are in a similar position as they work to install solar to meet the system’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, said Lindsey Rowell, CSU’s chief energy, sustainability and transportation officer. 

    Tariffs on solar panel materials from overseas and the early sunsetting of tax credits mean that “the cost of these projects are becoming prohibitive for campuses,” Rowell said. 

    Sweeps of undocumented immigrants in California may also lead to labor shortages that could slow the pace of construction, Rowell added. “Limiting the labor force in any way is only going to result in an increased cost, so those changes are frightening as well,” she said. 

    New Treasury Department guidance, issued Aug. 15, made it much harder for projects to meet  the threshold needed to qualify for the tax credits. Renewable energy projects previously qualified for credits once a developer spent 5 percent of a project’s cost. But the guidelines have been tightened — now, larger projects must pass a “physical work test,” meaning “significant physical labor has begun on a site,” before they can qualify for credits. With the construction commencement deadline looming next June, these will likely leave many projects ineligible for credits.

    “The rules are new, complex [and] not widely understood,” Ross said. “We’re really concerned about schools’ ability to continue to do solar projects and be able to effectively navigate these new rules.” 

    Schools without “fancy legal teams” may struggle to understand how the new tax credit changes in HR1 will affect their finances and future projects, she added.

    Some universities were just starting to understand how the IRA tax credits could help them fund projects. Lily Strehlow, campus sustainability coordinator at the University of Wisconsin, Eau-Claire, said the planning cycle for clean energy projects at the school can take ten years. The university is in the process of adding solar to the roof of a large science building, and depending on the date of completion, the project “might or might not” qualify for the credits, she said. 

    “At this point, everybody’s holding their breath,” said Rick Brown, founder of California-based TerraVerde Energy, a clean energy consultant to schools and agencies. 

    Brown said that none of his company’s projects are in a position where they’re not going to get done, but the company may end up seeing fewer new projects due to a higher cost of equipment. 

    Tim Carter, president of Second Nature, which supports climate work in education, added that colleges and universities are in a broader period of uncertainty, due to larger attacks from the Trump administration, and are not likely to make additional investments at this time: “We’re definitely in a wait and see.”

    Related: A government website teachers rely on is in peril 

    For youth activists, the fallout from HR1 is “disheartening,” Doshi said. 

    Emma and Molly Weber, climate activists since eighth grade, said they are frustrated. The Colorado-based twins, who will start college this fall, helped secure the first “Green New Deal for Schools” resolution in the nation in the Boulder Valley School District. Its goals include working toward a goal of Zero Net Energy by 2050, making school buildings greener, creating pathways to green jobs and expanding climate change education. 

    Emma, far left, and Molly Weber, far right, work with climate leaders from the Boulder Valley School District’s Sunrise Movement to prepare for Colorado’s legislative session. Credit: Courtesy of Emma Weber

    “It feels very demoralizing to see something you’ve been working so hard at get slashed back, especially since I’ve spoken to so many students from all over the country about these clean energy tax credits, being like, ‘These are the things that are available to you, and this is how you can help convince your school board to work on this,’” Emma Weber said.

    The Webers started thinking about other creative ways to pay for the clean energy transition and have settled on advocating for state-level legislation in the form of a climate superfund, where major polluters in a community would be responsible for contributing dollars to sustainability initiatives. 

    Consultants and sustainability coordinators said that they don’t see the demand for renewable energy going away. “Solar is the cheapest form of energy. It makes sense to put it on every rooftop that we can. And that’s true with or without tax credits,” Strehlow said. 

    *Correction: This version of the story includes updated information on the timeline for the expiration of tax credits for electric vehicle charging stations.

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected]. 

    This story about tax credits was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • Nation’s Report Card at risk, researchers say

    Nation’s Report Card at risk, researchers say

    This story was reported by and originally published by APM Reports in connection with its podcast Sold a Story: How Teach Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

    When voters elected Donald Trump in November, most people who worked at the U.S. Department of Education weren’t scared for their jobs. They had been through a Trump presidency before, and they hadn’t seen big changes in their department then. They saw their work as essential, mandated by law, nonpartisan and, as a result, insulated from politics.

    Then, in early February, the Department of Government Efficiency showed up. Led at the time by billionaire CEO Elon Musk, and known by the cheeky acronym DOGE, it gutted the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, posting on X that the effort would ferret out “waste, fraud and abuse.”

    A post from the Department of Government Efficiency.

    When it was done, DOGE had cut approximately $900 million in research contracts and more than 90 percent of the institute’s workforce had been laid off. (The current value of the contracts was closer to $820 million, data compiled by APM Reports shows, and the actual savings to the government was substantially less, because in some cases large amounts of money had been spent already.)

    Among staff cast aside were those who worked on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — also known as the Nation’s Report Card — which is one of the few federal education initiatives the Trump administration says it sees as valuable and wants to preserve.

    The assessment is a series of tests administered nearly every year to a national sample of more than 10,000 students in grades 4, 8 and 12. The tests regularly measure what students across the country know in reading, math and other subjects. They allow the government to track how well America’s students are learning overall. Researchers can also combine the national data with the results of tests administered by states to draw comparisons between schools and districts in different states.

    The assessment is “something we absolutely need to keep,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said at an education and technology summit in San Diego earlier this year. “If we don’t, states can be a little manipulative with their own results and their own testing. I think it’s a way that we keep everybody honest.”

    But researchers and former Department of Education employees say they worry that the test will become less and less reliable over time, because the deep cuts will cause its quality to slip — and some already see signs of trouble.

    “The main indication is that there just aren’t the staff,” said Sean Reardon, a Stanford University professor who uses the testing data to research gaps in learning between students of different income levels.

    All but one of the experts who make sure the questions in the assessment are fair and accurate — called psychometricians — have been laid off from the National Center for Education Statistics. These specialists play a key role in updating the test and making sure it accurately measures what students know.

    “These are extremely sophisticated test assessments that required a team of researchers to make them as good as they are,” said Mark Seidenberg, a researcher known for his significant contributions to the science of reading. Seidenberg added that “a half-baked” assessment would undermine public confidence in the results, which he described as “essentially another way of killing” the assessment.

    The Department of Education defended its management of the assessment in an email: “Every member of the team is working toward the same goal of maintaining NAEP’s gold-standard status,” it read in part.

    The National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policies for the national test, said in a statement that it had temporarily assigned “five staff members who have appropriate technical expertise (in psychometrics, assessment operations, and statistics) and federal contract management experience” to work at the National Center for Education Statistics. No one from DOGE responded to a request for comment.

    Harvard education professor Andrew Ho, a former member of the governing board, said the remaining staff are capable, but he’s concerned that there aren’t enough of them to prevent errors.

    “In order to put a good product up, you need a certain number of person-hours, and a certain amount of continuity and experience doing exactly this kind of job, and that’s what we lost,” Ho said.

    The Trump administration has already delayed the release of some testing data following the cutbacks. The Department of Education had previously planned to announce the results of the tests for 8th grade science, 12th grade math and 12th grade reading this summer; now that won’t happen until September. The board voted earlier this year to eliminate more than a dozen tests over the next seven years, including fourth grade science in 2028 and U.S. history for 12th graders in 2030. The governing board has also asked Congress to postpone the 2028 tests to 2029, citing a desire to avoid releasing test results in an election year. 

    “Today’s actions reflect what assessments the Governing Board believes are most valuable to stakeholders and can be best assessed by NAEP at this time, given the imperative for cost efficiencies,” board chair and former North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue said earlier this year in a press release.

    The National Assessment Governing Board canceled more than a dozen tests when it revised the schedule for the National Assessment of Educational Progress in April. This annotated version of the previous schedule, adopted in 2023, shows which tests were canceled. Topics shown in all caps were scheduled for a potential overhaul; those annotated with a red star are no longer scheduled for such a revision.

    Recent estimates peg the annual cost to keep the national assessment running at about $190 million per year, a fraction of the department’s 2025 budget of approximately $195 billion.

    Adam Gamoran, president of the William T. Grant Foundation, said multiple contracts with private firms — overseen by Department of Education staff with “substantial expertise” — are the backbone of the national test.

    “You need a staff,” said Gamoran, who was nominated last year to lead the Institute of Education Sciences. He was never confirmed by the Senate. “The fact that NCES now only has three employees indicates that they can’t possibly implement NAEP at a high level of quality, because they lack the in-house expertise to oversee that work. So that is deeply troubling.”

    The cutbacks were widespread — and far outside of what most former employees had expected under the new administration.

    “I don’t think any of us imagined this in our worst nightmares,” said a former Education Department employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. “We weren’t concerned about the utter destruction of this national resource of data.”

    “At what point does it break?” the former employee asked.

    Related: Suddenly sacked

    Every state has its own test for reading, math and other subjects. But state tests vary in difficulty and content, which makes it tricky to compare results in Minnesota to Mississippi or Montana.

    “They’re totally different tests with different scales,” Reardon said. “So NAEP is the Rosetta stone that lets them all be connected.”

    Reardon and his team at Stanford used statistical techniques to combine the federal assessment results with state test scores and other data sets to create the Educational Opportunity Project. The project, first released in 2016 and updated periodically in the years that followed, shows which schools and districts are getting the best results — especially for kids from poor families. Since the project’s release, Reardon said, the data has been downloaded 50,000 times and is used by researchers, teachers, parents, school boards and state education leaders to inform their decisions.

    For instance, the U.S. military used the data to measure school quality when weighing base closures, and superintendents used it to find demographically similar but higher-performing districts to learn from, Reardon said.

    If the quality of the data slips, those comparisons will be more difficult to make.

    “My worry is we just have less-good information on which to base educational decisions at the district, state and school level,” Reardon said. “We would be in the position of trying to improve the education system with no information. Sort of like, ‘Well, let’s hope this works. We won’t know, but it sounds like a good idea.’”

    Seidenberg, the reading researcher, said the national assessment “provided extraordinarily important, reliable information about how we’re doing in terms of teaching kids to read and how literacy is faring in the culture at large.”

    Producing a test without keeping the quality up, Seidenberg said, “would be almost as bad as not collecting the data at all.”

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.



    Source link

  • College president fears that federal education cuts will derail the promise of student parents, student military veterans and first-gen students

    College president fears that federal education cuts will derail the promise of student parents, student military veterans and first-gen students

    As a college president, I see the promise of higher education fulfilled every day. Many students at my institution, Whittier College, are the first in their families to attend a university. Some are parents or military veterans who have already served in the workforce and are returning to school to gain new skills, widen their perspectives and improve their job prospects.  

    These students are the future of our communities. We will rely on them to fill critical roles in health care, education, science, entrepreneurship and public service. They are also the students who stand to lose the most under the proposed fiscal year 2026 federal budget, and those who were already bracing for impact from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” cuts, including to the health care coverage many of them count on. 

    The drive with which these extraordinary students — both traditionally college-aged and older — pursue their degrees, often while juggling caregiving commitments or other responsibilities, never fails to inspire me.  

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    We do not yet know the precise contours of the spending provisions Congress will consider once funding from a continuing resolution expires at the end of September. Yet we expect they will take their cues from the president’s proposed budget, which slashes support for students and parents and especially hammers those already struggling to improve their lives by earning a college degree, with cuts to education, health and housing that could take effect as early as October 1.  

    That budget would mean lowering the maximum Pell Grant award from $7,395 to $5,710, reversing a decade of progress. For the nearly half of Whittier students who received Pell Grants last year, this rollback would profoundly jeopardize their chances of finishing school. 

    So would the proposal to severely restrict Federal Work-Study, which supports a third of Whittier students according to our most recent internal analysis, and to eliminate the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, which more than 16 percent of our student body relies upon. In addition, this budget would impose a cap on Direct PLUS Loans for Parents, which would impact roughly 60 percent of our parent borrowers. It would also do away with the Direct PLUS Loans for Graduates program.  

    These programs are lifelines, not just for our students but for students all across the country. They fuel social mobility and prosperity by making education a force for advancement through personal work ethic rather than a way to rack up debt. 

    If enacted, these proposed cuts would gut the support system that has enabled millions of low-income students to earn a college degree.  

    Higher education is a bridge. To cross it and achieve their full potential, students from all walks of life must have access to the support and resources colleges provide, whether through partnerships with local high schools or with professional gateway programs in engineering, accounting, business, nursing, physical therapy and more. Yet, to access these invaluable programs, they must be enrolled. How will they reach such heights if they suddenly can’t afford to advance their studies? 

    The harm I’ve described doesn’t stop with cuts to financial aid, loans and services. Proposed reductions also target research funding for NASA, NIH and the National Science Foundation. One frozen NASA grant has already led to the loss of paid student research fellowships at Whittier, a setback not just in dollars but in momentum for students building real-world skills, networks and résumés.  

    These research opportunities often enable talented first-generation students to connect their classroom learning to career pathways, opening the door to graduate school, lab technician roles and futures in STEM fields. We’ve seen how federal funding has supported student projects in everything from climate data analysis to environmental health.  

    Stripping away support for hands-on research undermines the federal government’s own calls for colleges like ours to better prepare students for the workforce by dismantling the very mechanisms that make such preparation possible. 

    Related: These federal programs help low-income students get to and through college. Trump wants to pull the funding 

    It’s particularly disheartening that these changes will disproportionately hurt those students who are working the hardest to achieve their objectives, who have done everything right and have the most to lose from this lack of investment in the future.  

    The preservation and strengthening of Pell, Work-Study, Supplemental Educational Opportunity grants and federal loan programs is not a partisan issue. It is a moral and economic imperative for a nation that has long been proud to be a land of opportunity.  

    Let’s build a system for strivers that opens doors instead of slamming them shut.  

    Let’s recommit to higher education as a public good. Today’s students are willing to work hard to deserve our continuing belief in them.  

    Kristine E. Dillon is the president of Whittier College in California. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about education cuts was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • Colleges struggle to make manufacturing training hot again

    Colleges struggle to make manufacturing training hot again

    ELYRIA, Ohio — Nolan Norman had no idea what microelectronic manufacturing entailed when his adviser at Midview High suggested he take the school’s new class on it last year. 

    Yet once he started fusing metal to circuit boards, he says he was hooked. “When I was little, I thought that wizards made these things,” the 18-year-old joked of the electronics he’s now able to assemble. Despite long “hating” the idea of college, he was motivated to enroll in the microelectronic manufacturing bachelor’s degree program at nearby Lorain County Community College this fall. He’s spent the summer working in a job in the field that gives him both college credit and pays $18 an hour. Said Norman: “Now I’m seeing the path to get to be one of these wizards.” 

    Norman’s path wasn’t accidental: Two years ago, Lorain County Community College partnered with Midview High to create the course, one of several ways the college is trying to recruit and train more young people for jobs in manufacturing. 

    Nationally, more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs are going unfilled, many of them in advanced manufacturing, which requires the sort of high-tech skills and postsecondary credentials that Norman is working toward. President Donald Trump is leveraging tariffs in part, he has said, to grow manufacturing jobs in the United States, including those that involve machinery or robotics and training after high school.

    Nolan Norman, 18, an incoming freshman at Lorain County Community College, observes a circuit board under a microscope on Aug. 6 in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report

    Yet as it is, colleges have struggled to add and revise their training based on employer input and prepare students for tomorrow’s jobs, not just today’s. In the area surrounding Lorain County Community College, officials estimate that they’d have to teach four times the number of students to meet today’s unfilled manufacturing jobs.

    Gogebic Community College, in rural Michigan, suspended its 22-year-old manufacturing technology program this spring because of low enrollment. “We could not get people into it,” registrar Karen Ball said, speaking in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the institution. “The needs in manufacturing are evolving so quickly, that to stay on top of it is too difficult.”

    And then there is the history of manufacturing in communities like Norman’s, where so many factories moved to other countries in recent decades. The manufacturing workforce in the Great Lakes region shrunk by 35 percent between 2000 and 2010, a loss of 1.6 million jobs. But nationwide manufacturing has seen some recovery since then, rising from 11.5 million manufacturing jobs in 2010 to 12.9 million today, according to an analysis by the Economic Innovation Group. 

    “If your family experienced tumultuous layoffs in steel or automotives, they may see manufacturing as a risky pathway rather than a solid pathway,” said Marisa White, vice president for enrollment management and student services at Lorain County Community College. “Individuals are like, ‘I don’t want my kids to go into something like that.’”

    Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    White and other Lorain officials, though, have been slowly making strides in adding more students in recent years — and in trying to keep up with the needs of companies. 

    Printed circuit boards before components are attached in a lab at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report

    In addition to partnering with Midview High, staff from the college set up tables at food banks and Boys and Girls Clubs where they answer questions about its manufacturing degree and certificate programs, and even partner with a nearby manufacturing nonprofit that uses holograms and a robot dog to get the attention of high school students. That is paying off, officials say. The college now produces 120 graduates each year in advanced manufacturing — a category that includes industrial engineering tech, mechanical engineering tech, welding, automation and microelectronics — compared to 43, a decade ago.

    It has also cultivated a large network of local employers and a system to do market research before launching certificate programs. In some cases, it partners with companies that pay for employees to get training at Lorain college. In a classroom on a recent Wednesday, one of those electrician apprentices, Tyler Tector, 25, had rigged a series of plastic tubes to a small air pump. He hoped it would generate enough suction to keep its grip on his lab partner’s smartphone, which dangled precariously in the air (and already had a cracked screen from some previous misadventure).

    The assignment was part of a class in practical applications of fluid power. Tector’s employer, Ford Motor Co., was sending him and a small group of other apprentice electricians to take this class once a week, so they could better work with the growing number of robots at the local engine plant.

    Nick Wade, an electrical apprentice for Ford Motor Co., works on a circuitry exercise during professor Brian Iselin’s practical applications of fluid power course at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report

    “Robots are the best co-workers,” joked Tector, who added that he’s not worried about bots putting him out of a job because so many humans are needed to fix them. “They do exactly what you tell them to do. They don’t ask questions. They don’t yell and complain.” They are finicky though, he added. If anything in a robot’s area gets bumped out of place even a fraction of an inch, that could throw the machine off and require reprogramming.

    So many employers told college officials they need technicians with basic knowledge across a range of trades that the college is starting a new associate degree program in the fall called Multicraft Industrial Maintenance that will include lessons like the one Tector is doing but in a condensed format. 

    “Because of the high-tech nature of things, employers don’t want students siloed into trades anymore,” said Brian Iselin, an assistant professor in manufacturing who is leading the effort. 

    Johnny Vanderford, who leads the college’s microelectronic manufacturing degree program, often spends part of his lunch break scouring LinkedIn for the latest job postings by local employers to see what skills they are looking for. His program’s model involves finding every student a paid internship, and students can take classes two days a week or in the evening to have the rest of the time free for paid work in the field. 

    Professor Brian Iselin teaches a course to employees of Ford’s Cleveland Engine Plant No. 1 at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report

    Vanderford pointed to a PowerPoint slide showing more than 90 manufacturing companies in the area he said the college has worked with: “We basically tailor our curriculum to meet their workforce needs.” In some cases that means wedging into a class syllabus training on some specialized machine that might be used at only a handful of employers.

    Rather than simply having advisory committees with a few large companies that meet occasionally, today Lorain and many other colleges follow a model that involves frequent discussions with company leaders, instructors directly participating in those meetings and a greater focus on the skills employers need. 

    “Those relationships take time,” said Shalin Jyotishi, managing director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative at the think tank New America. He says that it is hard for other community colleges to replicate best practices from Lorain because they are labor-intensive to enact.

    Employers also have a tendency to change their plans. For instance, when Tesla pledged to build an electrical vehicle plant in Flint, Michigan, the local Mott Community College started an EV program, said Jyotishi. But the plant never came. “The college still has a Tesla sign,” he said.

    Related: After its college closes, a rural community fights to keep a path to education open 

    The numbers no longer add up at Gogebic Community College, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. 

    When the college suspended its program in manufacturing technology in May, it had just three students.

    As with many programs at the college, a single employee was charged with administering and teaching. Doing all that plus staying on top of nearby companies’ workforce needs was “unsustainable,” said Ball, the registrar.

    The few small manufacturers in the area all say they have different needs, rather than one clear set of skills, she said, noting that “you can’t be a generalist in manufacturing.” Even when the college does identify a needed skill to teach, it takes at least six months to a year to get the program approved by college leaders and the accreditor. By then, companies might need something different. 

    And the pay offered by small manufacturers is often low, despite an expectation of training beyond a high school diploma, said Ball.

    The Richard Desich SMART Center at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, houses the microelectronic manufacturing systems program, which teaches students about the manufacture of semiconductors. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report

    Nationwide, automation has reduced the earning power for many manufacturing jobs, said Jyotishi of New America. “For a long time manufacturing was the bedrock of the middle class,” said Jyotishi. “That wage premium for manufacturing has actually gone away.” 

    And there’s a danger that as colleges aim to please employers, they will create programs that are too narrow, argues Davis Jenkins, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. (Editor’s note: The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Columbia’s Teachers College.) “You don’t want specific skills training — you don’t want to just train students to work in a fab,” he said, referring to a facility where microchips and other electronics are produced. “Whenever schools buy a lot of specific equipment for training, I worry a lot. What students really need are broader skills.”

    Even Lorain doesn’t always find the right fit. During the pandemic, the college started what it calls fast-track programs, which typically run 16 weeks, across a range of professional fields (not just manufacturing). But because of mixed success attracting students, officials recently slimmed the list from 60 to 13, said Tracy Green, vice president of strategic and institutional development at Lorain County Community College. And the college recently started winding down a program in industrial safety because of a lack of student interest, even though there are still a large number of job postings by local companies for jobs with those skills, said Iselin. 

    One provision in Trump’s new “one big, beautiful bill” promises a boost to manufacturing education, however. For the first time, the law will allow low-income students to use federal Pell Grants for short-term certificate programs, in what is known as Workforce Pell. It’s a change many community college leaders have been calling for for years as they have created more short-term programs in response to demand by students and employers who want to quickly gain new skills in fast-changing areas, including manufacturing. But that program won’t be up and running until the 2026-27 academic year. 

    Related: Colleges partnered with an EV battery factory to train students and ignite the economy. Trump’s clean energy war complicates their plans

    The promise of a big new employer moving to town can galvanize student interest in manufacturing. 

    In Ohio, the talk for years has been a $28 billion Intel chip manufacturing plant under construction in Columbus. The facility is expected to bring some 3,000 jobs to the area, and the company has committed $50 million to workforce education in the state, including $2 million to Lorain County Community College, which it used to buy new classroom equipment, support student scholarships, and pay for program development and instructor training.

    Chris Dukles, 36, an electrician apprentice for Ford Motor Co., takes notes during a course taught by Brian Iselin at Lorain County Community College. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report

    The top graduates in Lorain County Community College’s microelectronic manufacturing program each year typically get internships at Intel’s closest existing plant, which is in Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. It’s a motivator to work hard in their classes, some students say.

    Lia Douglas, a student in the microelectronic manufacturing program at Lorain, scored one of those slots and headed to Arizona last summer. The experience, though, was sobering. 

    “My plan really was to make a good impression with my internship, get a job maybe in Arizona even if it was for a year or two, and then try to move back to Ohio when they have an Ohio plant,” she said. 

    But one day last July, all the employees were unexpectedly summoned to an all-hands call where the company announced a wave of layoffs and reductions in some benefits that had interested Douglas, including a sabbatical program. This year, Intel announced that the opening of the Ohio plant has been delayed until 2030. 

    “I learned I had a little too much faith in a company and the promises of a company,” she said. “And it reminded me that at the end of the day, the company has to make money.”

    She’s still glad she chose Lorain’s program, which has landed her several local internships and opened her eyes to the many small and mid-sized manufacturers in the area. 

    Lia Douglas is a student in the microelectronic manufacturing program at Lorain County Community College. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report

    And she has been hooked on a career in making things ever since she was in middle school and a family friend taught her a bit of welding. Her hero was Adam Savage, co-host of the TV show “MythBusters,” who she even got to meet at a comic book convention in Cleveland.

    Douglas complains that students are told in high school that they either have to choose a trade for hands-on work or an academic track to prepare for a career behind a desk that might involve design and project management. She says that as manufacturing changes, there’s plenty of room to do both. In fact, she says, when a group of doctoral students from Kent State University recently visited the college’s clean room, she was amused to see them struggle with some of the tools the students routinely use in the microelectronic manufacturing program.

    “It takes as much brainpower to figure out what is the right tool for the right process as getting a Ph.D.,” she said. 

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected]. 

    This story about manufacturing jobs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • ¿Qué ha pasado desde que Texas eliminó las matrículas estatales para los estudiantes indocumentados?

    ¿Qué ha pasado desde que Texas eliminó las matrículas estatales para los estudiantes indocumentados?

    Read in English.

    SAN ANTONIO — Ximena tenía un plan. 

    La joven de 18 años de Houston iba a comenzar clases este otoño en la Universidad de Texas en Tyler, donde le habían concedido una beca de 10.000 dólares al año. Esperaba que eso le permitiera alcanzar su sueño: un doctorado en Química, seguido de una carrera como profesora o investigadora.

    “Y entonces se produjo el cambio en la matrícula estatal, y fue entonces cuando supe con certeza que tenía que dar un giro”, dijo Ximena. (The Hechinger Report se refiere a ella solo por su nombre de pila porque ella teme represalias por su situación migratoria).

    Aunque Ximena pasó sus primeros años en el norte de México, la mayoría de sus recuerdos son de después de mudarse a Estados Unidos con su padre. Ha asistido a escuelas en Estados Unidos desde el jardín de infancia y, para ella, el 12.º grado consistió principalmente en explicar conceptos avanzados de química a sus compañeros de clase y dirigir laboratorios como asistente de enseñanza.

    Pero en junio, los sueños de Ximena se vieron truncados cuando la oficina del fiscal general de Texas y la administración Trump colaboraron para poner fin a las disposiciones de una ley estatal que ofrecía a miles de estudiantes indocumentados como ella tasas de matrícula más bajas en las universidades públicas de Texas. Los funcionarios estatales y federales argumentaron con éxito ante los tribunales que la política vigente desde hacía mucho tiempo discriminaba a los ciudadanos estadounidenses de otros estados que pagaban una tasa más alta. Ese razonamiento se ha replicado ahora en demandas similares contra Kentucky, Oklahoma y Minnesota, como parte de una ofensiva más amplia contra el acceso de los inmigrantes a la educación pública.

    En la UT Tyler, la matrícula y las tasas estatales para el próximo año académico ascienden a un total de 9.736 dólares, frente a los más de 25.000 dólares que pagan los estudiantes de fuera del estado. Ximena y su familia no podían permitirse el elevado coste de la matrícula, por lo que la joven se retiró. En su lugar, se matriculó en el Houston Community College, donde los costos para los estudiantes de fuera del estado son de 227 dólares por hora semestral, casi tres veces más que la tarifa para los residentes en el distrito. La escuela solo ofrece clases básicas de química de nivel universitario, por lo que, para prepararse para un doctorado o para trabajar en investigaciones especializadas, Ximena seguirá necesitando encontrar la manera de pagar una universidad de cuatro años en el futuro.

    Su difícil situación es precisamente lo que los legisladores estatales de ambos partidos políticos esperaban evitar cuando aprobaron la Texas Dream Act o Ley de Sueños de Texas, una ley de 2001 que no solo abrió las puertas de la educación superior a los estudiantes indocumentados, sino que también tenía por objeto reforzar la economía y la mano de obra de Texas a largo plazo. Con esa ley, Texas se convirtió en el primero de más de dos docenas de estados en aplicar la matrícula estatal a los estudiantes indocumentados, y durante casi 24 años, esta política histórica se mantuvo intacta. Los legisladores conservadores propusieron repetidamente su derogación, pero a pesar de los años de control de un solo partido en la legislatura estatal, no hubo suficientes republicanos que apoyaran la derogación, incluso esta primavera, días antes de que la oficina del fiscal general de Texas y el Departamento de Justicia federal decidieran ponerle fin.

    Ahora, a medida que se acerca el semestre de otoño, los estudiantes inmigrantes están sopesando si darse de baja de sus cursos o esperar a que se aclare cómo les afecta el acuerdo de consentimiento firmado por el estado y el Departamento de Justicia. Los defensores de los inmigrantes temen que las universidades de Texas estén excluyendo a posibles alumnos que se encuentran en situación legal y siguen reuniendo los requisitos para pagar la matrícula estatal a pesar de la sentencia judicial, incluidos los beneficiarios del programa de Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA), los solicitantes de asilo y los que tienen Estatus de Protección Temporal o TPS, porque el personal de la universidad carece de conocimientos sobre inmigración y no ha recibido directrices claras sobre quién debe pagar exactamente la matrícula más alta.

    En el Austin Community College, que presta servicio a un área tan grande como el estado de Connecticut, los miembros del consejo de administración no están seguros de cómo aplicar correctamente la sentencia judicial. Mientras esperan respuestas, hasta ahora han decidido no enviar cartas a sus estudiantes solicitándoles información confidencial para determinar las tasas de matrícula.

    Una valla publicitaria que promociona el Austin Community College en español se encuentra en una autopista que conduce a Lockhart, Texas. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Hechinger Report

    “Esta confusión perjudicará inevitablemente a los estudiantes, porque lo que vemos es que, ante la falta de información y la presencia del miedo y la ansiedad, los estudiantes optarán por no continuar con la educación superior o se esconderán en las sombras y se sentirán como miembros marginados de la comunidad”, afirmó Manuel González, vicepresidente del consejo de administración del ACC.

    Por su parte, los expertos en políticas públicas advierten de que la mano de obra de Texas podría verse afectada, ya que los jóvenes con talento, muchos de los cuales han cursado toda su educación en el sistema de escuelas públicas del estado, ya no podrán permitirse los títulos de asociado y licenciatura que les permitirían seguir carreras que ayudarían a impulsar sus economías locales. En virtud de la Ley Texas Dream, los beneficiarios estaban obligados a comprometerse a solicitar la residencia permanente legal lo antes posible, lo que les daba la oportunidad de mantener puestos de trabajo relacionados con sus títulos. Sin la condición de residentes, es probable que sigan trabajando, pero en empleos peor remunerados y menos visibles.

    Relacionado: ¿Te interesa recibir más noticias sobre universidades? Suscríbete a nuestro boletín quincenal gratuito de educación superior.

    “Es una visión muy cortoplacista en lo que respecta al bienestar del estado de Texas”, afirmó Barbara Hines, antigua profesora de Derecho que ayudó a los legisladores a redactar la Ley Texas Dream.

    A principios de siglo, casi dos décadas después de que los niños indocumentados obtuvieran el derecho a asistir a la escuela pública en Estados Unidos, los estudiantes inmigrantes y sus defensores seguían frustrados porque la universidad seguía estando fuera de su alcance.

    Para el mayor general retirado de la Guardia Nacional del Ejército Rick Noriega, un demócrata que en ese momento formaba parte de la Legislatura de Texas, esa realidad le tocó de cerca cuando se enteró de que un joven trabajador de su distrito quería matricularse en el community college local para estudiar mecánica aeronáutica, pero no podía permitirse pagar la matrícula fuera del estado.

    Noriega llamó a la oficina del rector de la escuela, que pudo proporcionar fondos para que el estudiante se inscribiera. Pero esa experiencia le llevó a preguntarse: ¿cuántos niños más de su distrito se enfrentaban a las mismas barreras para acceder a la educación superior?

    Así que colaboró con un sociólogo para encuestar a los estudiantes de las escuelas secundarias locales sobre el problema, que resultó ser muy frecuente. Y el distrito de Noriega no era una excepción. En un estado que durante mucho tiempo ha tenido una de las mayores poblaciones de inmigrantes no autorizados del país, los políticos de todos los partidos conocían a electores, amigos o familiares afectados y querían ayudar. Una vez que Noriega decidió proponer la legislación, un republicano, Fred Hill, pidió ser coautor del proyecto de ley.

    Para los defensores de la Ley Texas Dream, el mejor argumento a favor de la matrícula estatal para los estudiantes indocumentados era de carácter económico. Después de que el estado ya hubiera invertido en estos estudiantes durante la educación pública K-12, tenía sentido seguir desarrollándolos para que, con el tiempo, pudieran ayudar a satisfacer las necesidades de mano de obra de Texas.

    “Habíamos gastado todo ese dinero en estos jóvenes, y ellos habían hecho todo lo que les pedimos —en muchos casos, eran superestrellas, los mejores de su promoción y cosas por el estilo— y luego se topaban con este obstáculo, que era la educación superior, cuyo costo era prohibitivo”, dijo Noriega.

    La legislación fue aprobada fácilmente por la Cámara de Representantes de Texas, que en ese momento estaba controlada por los demócratas, pero el Senado, liderado por los republicanos, se mostró menos complaciente.

    “Ni siquiera pude conseguir una audiencia. Me dijeron rotundamente: “No, esto no va a salir adelante””, afirmó Leticia Van de Putte, la entonces senadora estatal que patrocinó la legislación en su cámara.

    Las nubes cubren el cielo detrás de la torre de la Universidad de Texas en Austin. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Washington Post via Getty Images

    Para persuadir a sus colegas republicanos, añadió varias restricciones, entre ellas la de exigir a los estudiantes indocumentados que vivieran en Texas durante tres años antes de terminar la escuela secundaria o recibir un GED. (Se estimó que tres años era el tiempo medio que tardaría una familia en pagar suficientes impuestos estatales para compensar la diferencia entre la matrícula estatal y la matrícula fuera del estado). También incluyó la cláusula que obligaba a los estudiantes indocumentados que accedían a la matrícula estatal a firmar una declaración jurada en la que se comprometían a solicitar la tarjeta de residencia tan pronto como pudieran.

    Van de Putte también recurrió a los grupos empresariales de Texas para insistir en los argumentos económicos a favor del proyecto de ley. Y convenció a la comunidad empresarial para que pagara los autobuses que llevarían a pastores evangélicos conservadores latinos de Dallas, San Antonio, Houston y otras zonas del estado a Austin, para que pudieran llamar a las puertas en apoyo de la legislación y rezar con los senadores republicanos y su personal.

    Después de eso, la Ley Texas Dream fue aprobada por abrumadora mayoría en el Senado estatal en mayo de 2001, y el entonces gobernador Rick Perry, republicano, la promulgó como ley al mes siguiente.

    Relacionado: El College Board cancela programa de premios para estudiantes negros y latinos de alto rendimiento 

    Sin embargo, en 2007, incluso cuando los defensores de los derechos de los inmigrantes, los grupos religiosos y las asociaciones empresariales formaron una coalición para defender a los inmigrantes contra las políticas estatales perjudiciales, la legislatura de Texas comenzó a presentar una serie de propuestas generalmente contrarias a los inmigrantes. En 2010, las encuestas sugerían que los tejanos se oponían de manera abrumadora a que los estudiantes indocumentados pagaran las tasas de matrícula estatales.

    En 2012, un nuevo grupo de políticos de derecha fue elegido para ocupar cargos públicos, muchos de ellos opuestos filosóficamente a la ley y muy críticos al respecto. La defensa de la política por parte de Perry se volvió en su contra durante las primarias presidenciales republicanas de 2012, cuando su campaña fue objeto de críticas después de que, durante un debate, dijera a los oponentes de la igualdad en las matrículas: “No creo que tengan corazón”.

    Aún así, ninguno de los muchos proyectos de ley presentados a lo largo de los años para derogar la Ley Texas Dream tuvo éxito. E incluso el gobernador Greg Abbott, un republicano partidario de la línea dura en materia de inmigración, se mostró en ocasiones ambiguo sobre la política, y su portavoz afirmó en 2013 que Abbott creía que “el objetivo” de la matrícula estatal independientemente del estatus migratorio era “noble”.

    Los observadores legislativos afirman que algunos republicanos del estado siguen apoyando la política. “Es una cuestión bipartidista. Hay republicanos que apoyan la matrícula estatal”, afirmó Luis Figueroa, director de asuntos legislativos de la organización sin fines de lucro Every Texan, dedicada a la investigación y la defensa de políticas públicas. “Pero no pueden decirlo públicamente”.

    Mientras tanto, a medida que el tema se volvía más controvertido políticamente en Texas, la Texas Dream Act acabó amplificando un debate más amplio que finalmente condujo a la creación del DACA, el programa de la era Obama que ha dado a algunos inmigrantes indocumentados acceso a protecciones contra la deportación y permisos de trabajo.

    Relacionado: Las amenazas de deportación de Trump pesan sobre los grupos que ofrecen ayuda con la FAFSA 

    Incluso antes del DACA, muchos inmigrantes trabajaban, y los que siguen sin papeles a menudo siguen haciéndolo, ya sea como contratistas independientes para empleadores que hacen la vista gorda ante su estatus migratorio o creando sus propios negocios. Un estudio de mayo de 2020 reveló que los residentes no autorizados constituyen el 8,2 % de la población activa del estado y que, por cada dólar gastado en servicios públicos para ellos, el estado de Texas recuperaba 1,21 dólares en ingresos.

    Pero sin el permiso legal inmediato para trabajar, los graduados universitarios indocumentados que se habían beneficiado de la Ley Dream de Texas se vieron limitados a pesar de sus títulos. A medida que la lucha por la equidad en las matrículas se extendía a otros estados, también lo hacía la lucha por una solución legal que apoyara a los estudiantes beneficiados.

    Cuando estos jóvenes, cariñosamente apodados “soñadores o dreamers”, pasaron a primer plano para defenderse más públicamente, su difícil situación despertó simpatía. En 2017, el mismo año en que Trump comenzó su primer mandato, las encuestas dieron un giro y mostraron que la mayoría de los tejanos apoyaba las matrículas estatales para los estudiantes indocumentados. Más recientemente, las investigaciones han indicado una y otra vez que los estadounidenses apoyan una vía para que los residentes indocumentados traídos a Estados Unidos cuando eran niños obtengan la residencia legal.

    Pero los argumentos en contra de la matrícula estatal, independientemente del estatus migratorio, también ganaron popularidad: los críticos sostenían que la política es injusta para los ciudadanos estadounidenses de otros estados que tienen que pagar tasas más altas, o que los estudiantes indocumentados están ocupando plazas en escuelas competitivas que podrían ser ocupadas por estadounidenses.

    El Departamento de Justicia se apoyó en una retórica similar en la demanda que acabó con la igualdad en las matrículas en Texas, alegando que la ley estatal queda invalidada por la legislación federal de 1996 que prohíbe a los inmigrantes indocumentados acceder a la matrícula estatal basada en la residencia. Ese argumento se ha convertido en un modelo, ya que la administración Trump ha presentado demandas para desmantelar las políticas de matrícula estatal de otros estados para los residentes indocumentados.

    En Kentucky, el fiscal general del estado, el republicano Russell Coleman, ha seguido los pasos de Texas y ha recomendado que el consejo estatal que supervisa la educación superior retire su normativa que permite el acceso a la matrícula estatal en lugar de luchar por defenderla en los tribunales.

    Al mismo tiempo, la administración Trump ha encontrado otras formas de recortar las oportunidades de educación superior para los estudiantes indocumentados, revocando una política que les había ayudado a participar en programas de formación profesional, técnica y para adultos, e investigando a las universidades por ofrecerles becas.

    Relacionado: Universidades recurren estudiantes hispanos para compensar disminución en la matrícula

    En Texas, el repentino cambio de política con respecto a las matrículas estatales está causando caos. Las dos universidades más grandes del estado, Texas A&M y la Universidad de Texas, están utilizando diferentes directrices para decidir qué estudiantes deben pagar las tasas fuera del estado.

    “Creo que las universidades son las que se encuentran en esta situación realmente difícil”, dijo Figueroa. “No son expertos en inmigración. Han recibido muy poca orientación sobre cómo interpretar el decreto de consentimiento”.

    En medio de tanta confusión, Figueroa predijo que es probable que surjan futuras demandas. Los estudiantes y organizaciones afectados ya han presentado mociones ante los tribunales para defender tardíamente la Ley Texas Dream contra el Departamento de Justicia.

    Mientras tanto, los jóvenes estudiantes se enfrentan a decisiones difíciles. Una estudiante, que pidió permanecer en el anonimato debido a su condición de inmigrante indocumentada, estaba leyendo las noticias en su teléfono antes de acostarse cuando vio un titular sobre el resultado del caso judicial del Departamento de Justicia.

    “Me eché a llorar porque, como alguien que ha luchado por salir adelante en sus estudios, ahora que estoy en la educación superior, ha sido una bendición”, dijo. “Así que lo primero que pensé fue: “¿Qué voy a hacer ahora? ¿Hacia dónde va mi futuro? ¿Los planes que tenía para mí tendrán que detenerse por completo?””.

    La joven, que vive en San Antonio desde que tenía 9 meses, se había matriculado en seis cursos para el otoño en la Universidad Texas A&M-San Antonio y no estaba segura de si abandonarlos. Sería su último semestre antes de obtener sus títulos en psicología y sociología, pero no podía imaginar pagar la matrícula fuera del estado.

    “Estoy en el limbo”, dijo, como “muchos estudiantes en este momento”.

    Comunícate con la editora Caroline Preston al 212-870-8965 o [email protected]. 

    Esta historia sobre los estudiantes indocumentados fue producida por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente y sin fines de lucro que se centra en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Suscríbase al boletín informativo del Hechinger.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • The resumption of student loan payments means students will need new policies — and our help

    The resumption of student loan payments means students will need new policies — and our help

    After a three-year pause prompted by the pandemic, the clock on student loan repayments suddenly started ticking again in September 2023, and forbearance ended last September. For millions of borrowers like Shauntee Russell, the resumption of payments marked a harsh return to financial reality.  

    Russell, a single mother of three from Chicago, had received $127,000 in student loan forgiveness through the SAVE program, and had experienced profound relief at having that $632 monthly payment lifted from her shoulders. SAVE exemplified both the transformative power of debt relief and the urgent need to continue this fight — but now SAVE has been suspended. 

    Such setbacks cannot be the end of our story, as I document in my forthcoming book. The resumption of loan payments, while painful, must serve as a rallying cry rather than a surrender. We stand at a critical juncture. The Supreme Court’s devastating blow to former President Biden’s initial forgiveness plan and the ongoing legal challenges to programs like SAVE have left 45 million borrowers in a state of financial limbo. The fundamental inequities of our higher education system have never been more apparent.  

    Black students graduate with nearly 50 percent more debt than their white counterparts, while women hold roughly two-thirds of all outstanding student debt — a staggering $1.5 trillion that continues to grow. These aren’t just statistics; they represent systemic barriers that prevent entire communities from achieving economic mobility. 

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    The students I interviewed while reporting on this crisis reveal the human cost of inaction. They include Maria Sanchez, a nursing student in St. Louis who skips meals to save money and can only access textbooks through library loans.  

    Then there is Robert Carroll, who gave up his dorm room in Cleveland and now alternates between friends’ couches just to stay in school.  

    These students represent the millions who are working multiple jobs, sacrificing basic needs and seeing their dreams deferred under the weight of financial pressure. 

    Yet what strikes me most is their resilience and determination. Despite these overwhelming obstacles, these students persist, driven by the same belief that motivated civil rights leaders like Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. — that education is the pathway to economic empowerment and social justice. 

    The current political landscape, with Donald J. Trump’s return to the presidency and a Republican-controlled Congress, presents unprecedented challenges. Plans to dismantle key borrower protections and efforts to eliminate the Department of Education signal a dark period ahead for student debt relief.  

    But history teaches us that progress often comes through sustained grassroots organizing and innovative policy solutions at multiple levels of government and society. 

    State governments have an opportunity to fill the federal void through programs like Massachusetts’ Student Loan Borrower Bill of Rights and Maine’s Student Loan Repayment Tax Credit. 

    Universities must step up with institutional relief programs, as my own institution, Trinity Washington University, did when it settled $1.8 million in student balances during the pandemic. 

    The Black church, which has long understood the connection between education and liberation, continues to provide crucial support through scholarship programs. Organizations like the United Negro College Fund, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education remain vital pillars in making higher education accessible. 

    Still, individual, institutional and state efforts, while necessary, are not sufficient. We need comprehensive federal action that treats student debt as what it truly is: a civil rights issue and a moral imperative. The magnitude of the crisis — it affects Americans across every congressional district — creates unique opportunities for bipartisan coalition building. 

    Smart advocates are already reframing the narrative by replacing partisan talking points with economic arguments that resonate across ideological lines: workforce development, entrepreneurship and American competitiveness on the world stage.  

    When student debt prevents nurses from serving rural communities, teachers from working in underserved schools and young entrepreneurs from starting businesses, it becomes an economic drag that affects everyone.  

    Related: How Trump is changing higher education: The view from 4 campuses 

    The path to federal action may require creative approaches — perhaps through tax policy, regulatory changes or targeted relief for specific professions — but the political mathematics of 45 million impacted voters ultimately makes comprehensive action not just morally necessary, but politically inevitable.  

    Student debt relief is not about handouts — it’s about honoring the promise that education should be a ladder up, not an anchor weighing down entire generations; it’s about ensuring that Shauntee Russell’s relief becomes the norm, not the exception. The fight is far from over.  

    The young activists I met at the March on Washington 60th anniversary understood something profound: Their debt is not their fault, but their fight is their responsibility. They carry forward the legacy of those who came before them who believed that access to education should not depend on one’s family wealth, and that crushing debt should not be the price of pursuing knowledge. 

    The arc of history still bends toward justice — but in this era of political resistance, we must be prepared to bend it ourselves through sustained organizing, innovative policy solutions and an unwavering commitment to the principle that education is a right, not a privilege reserved for the wealthy. 

    The resumption of payments is not the end of this story. It’s the beginning of the next chapter in our fight for educational equity and economic justice. And this chapter, like those before it, will be written by the voices of the millions who refuse to let debt define their destiny. 

    Jamal Watson is a professor and associate dean of graduate studies at Trinity Washington University and an editor at Diverse Issues In Higher Education. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about student loan payments was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • TRIO helps low-income students get to and through college. Trump wants to end it

    TRIO helps low-income students get to and through college. Trump wants to end it

    MOREHEAD, Ky. — The summer after ninth grade, Zoey Griffith found herself in an unfamiliar setting: a dorm on the Morehead State University campus.

    There, she’d spend the months before her sophomore year taking classes in core subjects including math and biology and electives like oil painting. 

    For Griffith, it was an opportunity, but a scary one. “It was a big deal for me to live on campus at the age of 14,” she said. Morehead State is about an hour from her hometown of Maysville. “I was nervous, and I remember that I cried the first time that my dad left me on move-in day.”

    Her mother became a parent as a teenager and urged her daughter to avoid the same experience. Griffith’s father works as a mechanic, and he frowns upon the idea of higher education, she said. 

    And so college back then seemed a distant and unlikely idea.

    But Griffith’s stepsister had introduced her to a federal program called Upward Bound. It places high school students in college dorms during the summer, where they can take classes and participate in workshops on preparing for the SAT and financial literacy. During the school year, students get tutoring and work on what are called individual success plans.

    Upward Bound students test the robots they built in their robotics class – evaluating for programming and mechanical issues. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Upward Bound Programs

    It’s part of a group of federal programs, known as TRIO, aimed at helping low-income and first-generation students earn a college degree, often becoming the first in their families to do so. 

    So, thanks to that advice from her stepsister, Kirsty Beckett, who’s now 27 and pursuing a doctorate in psychology, Griffith signed up and found herself in that summer program at Morehead State. Now, Griffith is enrolled at Maysville Community and Technical College, with plans to become an ultrasound technician.

    Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    TRIO, once a group of three programs — giving it a name that stuck — is now the umbrella over eight some dating back to 1965. Together, they serve roughly 870,000 students nationwide a year.

    It has worked with millions of students and has bipartisan support in Congress. Some in this part of the Appalachian region of Kentucky, and across the country, worry about students who won’t get the same assistance if President Donald Trump ends federal spending on the program. 

    Students Zoey Griffith, left, and Aniyah Caldwell, right, say the Upward Bound program has been life-changing for them. Upward Bound is one of eight federal programs under the TRIO umbrella. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report

    A White House budget proposal would eliminate spending on TRIO. The document says “access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means” and puts the onus on colleges to recruit and support students.

    Advocates note that the programs, which cost roughly $1.2 billion each year, have a proven track record. Students in Upward Bound, for example, are more than twice as likely to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24 than other students from some of the nation’s poorest households, according to the Council for Opportunity in Education. COE is a nonprofit that represents TRIO programs nationwide and advocates for expanded opportunities for first-generation, low-income students.

    For the high school class of 2022, 74 percent of Upward Bound students enrolled immediately in college — compared with only 56 percent of high school graduates in the bottom income quartile. 

    Upward Bound is for high school students, like Griffith. Another TRIO program, Talent Search, helps middle and high school students, without the residential component. One called Student Support Services (SSS) provides tutoring, advising and other assistance to at-risk college students. Another program prepares students for graduate school and doctoral degrees, and yet another trains TRIO staff.

    A 2019 study found that after four years of college, students in SSS were 48 percent more likely to complete an associate’s degree or certificate, or transfer to a four-year institution, than a comparable group of students with similar backgrounds and similar levels of high school achievement who were not in the program. 

    “TRIO has been around for 60 years,” said Kimberly Jones, the president of COE. “We’ve produced millions of college graduates. We know it works.”

    Related: Tracking Trump: His actions to dismantle the Education Department, and more

    Yet Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the White House refer to the programs as a “relic of the past.” 

    Jones countered that census data shows that “students from the poorest families still earn college degrees at rates far below that of students from the highest-income families,” demonstrating continued need for TRIO.

    McMahon is challenging that and pushing for further study of those TRIO success rates. In 2020, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that even though the Education Department collects data on TRIO participants, “the agency has gaps in its evidence on program effectiveness.” The GAO criticized the Education Department for having “outdated” studies on some TRIO programs, and no studies at all for others. Since then, the department has expanded its evaluations of TRIO. 

    East Main Street in Morehead, Kentucky, just outside of Morehead State’s campus. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report

    During a Senate subcommittee hearing in June, McMahon acknowledged “there is some effectiveness of the programs, in many circumstances.”

    Still, she said there is not enough research to justify TRIO’s total cost. “That’s a real drawback in these programs,” McMahon said. 

    Now, she is asking lawmakers to eliminate TRIO spending after this year and has already canceled some previously approved TRIO grants. 

    Related: A big reason rural students never go to college: No one recruits them 

    “What are we supposed to do, especially here in eastern Kentucky?” asked David Green, a former Upward Bound participant who is now marketing director for a pair of Kentucky hospitals.

    Green lives in a region that has some of the nation’s highest rates of unemployment, cancer and opioid addiction. “I mean, these people have big hearts, they want to grow,” he added. Cutting these programs amounts to “stifling us even more than we’re already stifled.”

    Green described his experience with TRIO at Morehead State in the mid-1980s as “one of the best things that ever happened to me.” 

    He grew up in a home without running water in Maysville, a city of about 8,000 people. It was on a TRIO trip to Washington, D.C., he recalled, that he stayed in a hotel for the first time. Green remembers bringing two suitcases so he could pack a pillow, sheets and comforter — unaware the hotel room would have its own.

    He met students from other towns and with different backgrounds. Some became lifelong friends. Green learned table manners, the kind of thing often required in business settings. After college, he was so grateful for TRIO that he became one of its tutors, working with the next generation of students. 

    TRIO’s all-encompassing nature makes it unique among college access programs, said Tom Stritikus, the president of Occidental College, a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles. He was previously president of Fort Lewis College, a public liberal arts school in Colorado with a large Native American student population. At both institutions, Stritikus said, he witnessed the effectiveness of TRIO’s methods, which he described as a “soup to nuts” menu of services for at-risk students trying to be the first in their families to earn degrees.

    After participating in the Upward Bound program, David Green has had a successful career, becoming a community leader in his hometown of Maysville, Kentucky. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report

    Jones, of the Council for Opportunity in Education, said she is cautiously optimistic that Congress will continue funding TRIO, despite the Trump administration’s request. The programs serve students in all 50 states. According to the COE, about 34 percent are white, 32 percent are Black, 23 percent are Hispanic, 5 percent are Asian, and 3 percent are Native American. TRIO’s guidelines require that a majority of participants come from families making less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level. For a family of four living in the contiguous United States, that’s a max of $48,225 a year.

    Related: How Trump is changing higher education: The view from 4 campuses

    In May, Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, called TRIO “one of the most effective programs in the federal government,” which, he said, is supported by “many, many members of Congress.” 

    In June, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia and a former TRIO employee, spoke about its importance to her state. TRIO helps “a student that really needs the extra push, the camaraderie, the community,” she said. “I’ve gone to their graduations, and been their speaker, and it’s really quite delightful to see how far they’ve come, in a short period of time.”

    TRIO survived, with its funding intact, when the Senate appropriations committee approved its budget last month. The House is expected to take up its version of the annual appropriations bill for education in early September. Both chambers ultimately have to agree on federal spending, a process that could drag on until December, leaving TRIO’s fate in Congress uncertain. 

    While lawmakers debate its future, the Trump administration could also delay or halt TRIO funding on its own. Earlier this year, the administration took the unprecedented step of unilaterally canceling about 20 previously approved new and continuing TRIO grants.

    At Morehead State, leaders say the university — and the region it serves — need the boost it receives from TRIO: While roughly 38 percent of American adults have earned at least a bachelor’s degree, in Kentucky, that figure is only 16 percent. And, locally, it’s 7 percent, according to Summer Fawn Bryant, the director of TRIO’s Talent Search programs at the university. 

    Summer Fawn Bryant, center, is director of TRIO’s Talent Search programs at Morehead State University in Kentucky. She stands with former TRIO students Alexandria Daniel, left, and Blake Thayer, right. Credit: Photo courtesy of Summer Fawn Bryant

    TRIO works to counter the stigma of attending college that still exists in parts of eastern Kentucky, Bryant said. A student from a humble background who is considering college, she said, might be scolded with the phrase: Don’t get above your raisin’.

    “A parent may say it,” Bryant said. “A teacher may say it.” 

    She added that she’s seen time and again how these programs can turn around the lives of young students facing adversity. 

    Students like Beth Cockrell, an Upward Bound alum from Pineville, Ky., who said her mom struggled with parenting. “Upward Bound stepped in as that kind of co-parent and helped me decide what my major was going to be.” 

    Cockrell went on to earn three degrees at Morehead State and has worked as a teacher for the past 19 years. She now works with students at her alma mater and teaches third grade at Conkwright Elementary School, about an hour away.

    In a few years, 17-year-old Upward Bound student Isaac Bocook plans to join the teaching ranks too — as a middle school social studies teacher. Bocook said he was indecisive about what to study after high school, but he finally figured it out after attending a career fair at Morehead State’s historic Button Auditorium. 

    Upward Bound students visit the Great Lake Science Center in Cleveland for the end-of-summer educational trip. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Upward Bound Programs

    Bocook lives in Lewis County, with just under 13,000 residents and a single public high school. At Morehead State’s TRIO program, Bocook met teenagers from across the entire region, which he said improved his social skills. TRIO also helped him with all kinds of paperwork on the pathway to adulthood. Filling out financial aid forms. Writing scholarship applications. Crafting a resume.

    “I’m just truly grateful to have TRIO, as sort of like a hand to hold,” Bocook said.

    His need for guidance is similar to what students at Morgan County High School in West Liberty, Kentucky, experience, said Lori Keeton, the school guidance counselor. The challenge facing these first-generation students, she said, is that “you just simply don’t know what you don’t know.”

    As the sole counselor for 550 students, Keeton doesn’t have time to help each student navigate the complex college-application process and said she worries that some of her students will apply to fewer colleges, or no colleges at all, if TRIO disappears. 

    TRIO’s Talent Search program serves about 100 students at her high school, and roughly another dozen are part of Upward Bound. Each program has a dedicated counselor who visits regularly to guide and assist students.

    Related: From gangs to college

    Sherry Adkins, an eastern Kentucky native who attended TRIO more than 50 years ago and went on to become a registered nurse, said efforts to cut TRIO spending ignore the long-term benefits. “Do you want all of these people that are disadvantaged to continue like that? Where they’re taking money from society? Or do you want to help prepare us to become successful people who pay lots of taxes?”

    As Washington considers TRIO’s future, program directors like Bryant, at Morehead State, press forward. She has preserved a text message a former student sent her two years ago to remind her of what’s at stake.

    After finishing college, the student was attending a conference on child abuse when a presenter showed a slide that included the quote: “Every child who winds up doing well has had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult.”

    “Forever thankful,” the student texted Bryant, “that you were that supportive adult for me.”

    Contact editor Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445, securely on Signal at NirviShah.14 or via email at [email protected]. 

    This story about TRIO was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • What Trump’s education cuts mean for literacy

    What Trump’s education cuts mean for literacy

    This podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission.

    There’s an idea about how children learn to read that’s held sway in schools for more than a generation – even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this new American Public Media podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It’s an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences – children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.

    Episode 14: The Cuts

    Education research is at a turning point in the United States. The Trump administration is slashing government funding for science and dismantling the Department of Education. We look at what the cuts mean for the science of reading — and the effort to get that science into schools.

    This podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by  APM Reports and reprinted with permission.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • What’s happened since Texas killed in-state tuition for undocumented students

    What’s happened since Texas killed in-state tuition for undocumented students

    SAN ANTONIO — Ximena had a plan. 

    The 18-year-old from Houston was going to start college in the fall at the University of Texas at Tyler, where she had been awarded $10,000 a year in scholarships. That, she hoped, would set her up for her dream: a Ph.D. in chemistry, followed by a career as a professor or researcher.

    “And then the change to in-state tuition happened, and that’s when I knew for sure that I had to pivot,” said Ximena, who was born in Mexico but attended schools stateside since kindergarten. (The Hechinger Report is referring to her by only her first name because she fears retaliation for her immigration status.) 

    In June, the Texas attorney general’s office and the Trump administration worked together to end the provisions in a state law that had offered thousands of undocumented students like her lower in-state tuition rates at Texas public colleges. State and federal officials successfully argued in court that the long-standing policy discriminated against U.S. citizens from other states who paid a higher rate. That rationale has now been replicated in similar lawsuits against Kentucky, Oklahoma and Minnesota — part of a broader offensive against immigrants’ access to public education. 

    At UT Tyler, in-state tuition and fees for the upcoming academic year total $9,736, compared to more than $25,000 for out-of-state students. Ximena and her family couldn’t afford the higher tuition bill, so she withdrew. Instead, she enrolled at Houston Community College, where out-of-state costs are $227 per semester hour, nearly three times the in-district rate. The school offers only basic college-level chemistry classes, so to set herself up for a doctorate or original research, Ximena will still need to find a way to pay for a four-year university down the line. 

    Her predicament is exactly what state lawmakers from both political parties had hoped to avoid when they passed the Texas Dream Act, 2001 legislation that not only opened doors to higher education for undocumented students but was also meant to bolster Texas’s economy and its workforce long-term. With that law, Texas became the first of more than two dozen states to implement in-state tuition for undocumented students, and for nearly 24 years, the landmark policy remained intact. Conservative lawmakers repeatedly proposed to repeal it, but despite years of single-party control in the state legislature, not enough Republicans embraced repeal even as recently as this spring, days before the Texas attorney general’s office and the federal Department of Justice moved to end it. 

    Now, as the fall semester approaches, immigrant students are weighing whether to disenroll from their courses or await clarity on how the consent agreement entered into by the state and DOJ affects them.

    Immigration advocates are worried that Texas colleges and universities are boxing out potential attendees who are lawfully present and still qualify for in-state tuition despite the court ruling — including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, asylum applicants and Temporary Protected Status holders — because university personnel lack immigration expertise and haven’t been given clear guidelines on exactly who needs to pay the higher tuition rate. 

    At Austin Community College, which serves an area as large as Connecticut, members of the board of trustees are unsure how to accurately implement the ruling. As they await answers, they’ve so far decided against sending letters asking their students for sensitive information in order to determine tuition rates. 

    “This confusion will inevitably harm students because what we find is that in the absence of information and in the presence of fear and anxiety, students will opt to not continue higher education,” said Manuel Gonzalez, vice chair of the ACC board of trustees.

    A billboard promoting Austin Community College in Spanish sits on a highway that leads to Lockhart, Texas. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Hechinger Report

    Policy experts, meanwhile, warn that Texas’s workforce could suffer as talented young people, many of whom have spent their entire education in the state’s public school system, will no longer be able to afford the associate’s and bachelor’s degrees that would allow them to pursue careers that would help propel their local economies. Under the Texas Dream Act, beneficiaries were required to commit to applying for lawful permanent residence as soon as possible, giving them the opportunity to hold down jobs related to their degrees. Without resident status, it’s likely they’ll still work — just more in lower-paying, under-the-radar jobs.  

    “It’s so short-sighted in terms of the welfare of the state of Texas,” said Barbara Hines, a former law school professor who helped legislators craft the Texas Dream Act. 

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    By the turn of the century, almost two decades after undocumented children won the right to attend public school in the U.S., immigrant students and their champions remained frustrated that college remained out of reach. 

    For retired Army National Guard Maj. Gen. Rick Noriega, a Democrat who served in the Texas Legislature at the time, that reality hit close to home when he learned of a young yard worker in his district who wanted to enroll at the local community college for aviation mechanics but couldn’t afford out-of-state tuition. 

    Noriega called the school chancellor’s office, which was able to provide funding for the student to attend. But that experience led him to wonder: How many more kids in his district were running up against the same barriers to higher education? 

    So he worked with a sociologist to poll students at local high schools about the problem, which turned out to be widespread. And Noriega’s district wasn’t an outlier. In a state that has long had one of the nation’s largest unauthorized immigrant populations, politicians across the partisan divide knew affected constituents, friends or family members and wanted to help. Once Noriega decided to propose legislation, a Republican, Fred Hill, asked to serve as a joint author on the bill. 

    To proponents of the Texas Dream Act, the best argument in support of in-state tuition for undocumented students was an economic one. After the state had already invested in these students during K-12 public schooling, it made sense to continue developing them so they could eventually help meet Texas’ workforce needs. 

    “We’d spent all this money on these kids, and they’d done everything that we asked them to do — in many instances superstars and valedictorians and the like — and then they hit this wall, which was higher education that was cost prohibitive,” said Noriega. 

    The legislation easily passed the Texas House of Representatives, which was Democratic-controlled at the time, but the Republican-led Senate was less accommodating. 

    “I couldn’t even get a hearing,’” said Leticia Van de Putte, the then-state senator who sponsored the legislation in her chamber. 

    To persuade her Republican colleagues, she added several restrictions, including requiring undocumented students to live in Texas for three years before finishing high school or receiving a GED. (Three years was estimated as the average time it would take a family to pay enough in state taxes to make up the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition.) She also included the clause mandating that undocumented students who accessed in-state tuition sign an affidavit pledging to pursue green cards as soon as they were able.   

    Van de Putte also turned to Texas business groups to hammer home the economic case for the bill. And she convinced the business community to pay for buses to bring Latino evangelical conservative pastors from Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and other areas of the state to Austin, so they could knock on doors in support of the legislation and pray with Republican senators and their staff. 

    After that, the Texas Dream Act overwhelmingly passed the state Senate in May 2001, and then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, signed it into law the following month.

    Related: How Trump is changing higher education: The view from four campuses

    Yet by 2007, even as immigrant rights advocates, faith-based groups and business associations formed a coalition to defend immigrants against harmful state policies, the Texas legislature was starting to introduce a wave of generally anti-immigrant proposals. In 2010, polling suggested Texans overwhelmingly opposed allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates. 

    By 2012, a new slew of right-wing politicians was elected to office, many philosophically opposed to the law — and loud about it. Perry’s defense of the policy had come back to haunt him during the 2012 Republican presidential primary, when his campaign was dogged by criticism after he told opponents of tuition equity during a debate, “I don’t think you have a heart.” 

    Still, none of the many bills introduced over the years to repeal the Texas Dream Act were successful. And even Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican border hawk, at times equivocated on the policy, with his spokesperson saying in 2013 that Abbott believed “the objective” of in-state tuition regardless of immigration status was “noble.”

    Legislative observers say that some Republicans in the state continue to support the policy. “It’s a bipartisan issue. There are Republicans in support of in-state tuition,” said Luis Figueroa, senior director of legislative affairs at the public policy research and advocacy nonprofit Every Texan. “They cannot publicly state it.”

    Meanwhile, as the topic became more politically charged in Texas, the Texas Dream Act ended up amplifying a larger conversation that eventually led to the creation of DACA, the Obama-era program that has given some undocumented immigrants access to deportation protections and work permits. 

    Even before DACA, many immigrants worked, and those who remain undocumented often still do, either as independent contractors for employers that turn a blind eye to their immigration status or by starting their own businesses. A study from May 2020 found that unauthorized residents make up 8.2 percent of the state’s workforce, and for every dollar spent toward public services for them, the state of Texas recouped $1.21 in revenue. 

    But without the immediate legal permission to work, undocumented college graduates who had benefited from the Texas Dream Act found themselves limited despite their degrees. As the fight for tuition equity spread to other states, so did the fight for a legal solution to support the students it benefited. 

    When these young people — affectionately dubbed Dreamers — took center stage to more publicly advocate for themselves, their plight proved sympathetic. By 2017, the same year Trump began his first term, polling had flipped to show a plurality of Texans in support of in-state tuition for undocumented students. More recently, research has indicated time and time again that Americans support a pathway to legal status for undocumented residents brought to the U.S. as children. 

    But arguments against in-state tuition regardless of immigration status also grew in popularity: Critics contended that the policy is unfair to U.S. citizens from other states who have to pay higher rates, or that undocumented students are taking spots at competitive schools that could be filled by documented Americans. 

    The DOJ leaned on similar rhetoric in the lawsuit that killed tuition equity in Texas, saying the state law is superseded by 1996 federal legislation banning undocumented immigrants from getting in-state tuition based on residency. That argument has become a template as the Trump administration has sued to dismantle other states’ in-state tuition policies for undocumented residents.

    In Kentucky, state Attorney General Russell Coleman, a Republican, has followed in Texas’ footsteps, recommending that the state council overseeing higher education withdraw its regulation allowing for access to in-state tuition instead of fighting to defend it in court. 

    At the same time, the Trump administration has found other ways to cut back on higher education opportunities for undocumented students, rescinding a policy that had helped them participate in career, technical and adult education programs and investigating universities for offering them scholarships. 

    Related: Which schools and colleges are being investigated by the Trump administration? 

    Back in Texas, the sudden policy change regarding in-state tuition is causing chaos. Even the state’s two largest universities, Texas A&M and the University of Texas, are using different guidelines to decide which students must pay out-of-state rates. 

    Clouds fill the sky behind the tower at the University of Texas. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Washington Post via Getty Images

    “Universities, I think, are the ones that are put in this really difficult position,” Figueroa said. “They are not immigration experts. They’ve received very little guidance about how to interpret the consent decree.” 

    Amid so much confusion, Figueroa predicted, future lawsuits will likely crop up. Already, affected students and organizations have filed motions in court seeking to belatedly defend the Texas Dream Act against the DOJ.

    In the meantime, young scholars are facing difficult choices. One student, who asked to remain anonymous because of her undocumented immigration status, was scrolling through the news on her phone before bed when she saw a headline about the outcome of the DOJ court case. 

    “I burst in tears because, you know, as someone who’s been fighting to get ahead in their education, right now that I’m in higher education, it’s been a complete blessing,” she said. “So the first thing that I just thought of is ‘What am I going to do now? Where is my future heading?’ The plans that I have had going for me, are they going to have to come to a complete halt?’” 

    The young woman, who has lived in San Antonio since she was 9 months old, had enrolled in six courses for the fall at Texas A&M-San Antonio and wasn’t sure whether to drop them. It would be her final semester before earning her psychology and sociology degrees, but she couldn’t fathom paying for out-of-state tuition. 

    “I’m in the unknown,” she said, like “many students in this moment.”

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].

    This story about the Texas Dream Act was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Source link